How to make delicious, pasta-free lasagne

Do you love lasagne, but avoid it because of the carb-loaded pasta? Well here’s a great healthy lasagne that uses sheets of butternut squash instead of pasta sheets and it tastes fantastic!

My family love lasagne, so its a special treat whenever I make one. But as someone trying to reduce carbs then traditional lasagne doesn’t tick the healthier eating box for me.

Supermarkets are now selling a great range of ready prepared veg ranging from cauliflower cous cous to courgetti to butternut squash sheets.

So when cooking a lasagne for my family I thought I’d give these a try instead of pasta sheets.

Using butternut squash sheets as an alternative, is a really quick and easy to use, healthy alternative. When constructing the lasagne it really is simply a case of swapping the pasta sheets for the butternut squash sheets. The beauty of this is that if you want to make a traditional pasta based lasagne for the rest of the family and a healthier version for you then it’s simply an extra dish.

Ingredients (feeds 6)

Bolognese Sauce

2 red onions, thinly sliced

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

oil for frying

1kg of lean mince

salt and pepper for seasoning

Lea & Perrins Sauce

2 tins of chopped tomatoes

White Sauce

50g butter

50g plain flour

500ml whole milk

Method

Fry the onion in the oil until softened and then add the garlic and fry until soft. Add the mince and fry until browned. Season with salt and pepper and a generous splash of the Lea & Perrins sauce. Add the tomatoes, mix, cover with a lid and leave to cook. Meanwhile heat the oven to 180 degrees and start the white sauce. In a separate pan melt the butter, then add the flour and mix to a roux. Cook for 2 mins then gradually start adding in the milk. Using a whisk, mix until the sauce thickens.

Now you are ready to construct the lasagne. If you are using the butternut squash sheets then simply use these as the layers of the lasagne in exactly the same way as you would normal pasta sheets. If you are cooking a pasta version as well then it’s at this point that you simply make up 2 dishes of lasagne – simple.